


Half A Holiday

by Trovia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Backstory, Christmas, Dysfunctional Family, Family Issues, Gen, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:11:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7812043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trovia/pseuds/Trovia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellatrix and Narcissa wait for a door to open.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half A Holiday

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [obscuro_2016](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/obscuro_2016) collection. 



> Dear anonymous prompter, I hope you will forgive me that I took liberties with the prompt and added a little (a lot) Bellatrix into the mix, and that you'll like it anyway!

_Manchester, 1978._

“Oh bloody hell, Cissy, I _told_ you to stay home. You’re sick. Apparate home and forget about tradition. I can do it on my own this one time,” Bellatrix scolded the third time her sister sneezed into a silken handkerchief. Narcissa possessed the ability of sneezing gracefully and with a bizarre amount of elegance, wrinkling her reddened nose while she crumpled the handkerchief into a ball and pushed it back in her sleeve. On other days, the delicacy of the action would have amused Bella rather a lot. Today, she sharply took in the other woman's slender and fragile frame, too aware of the icy cold December wind ruffling both their robes. 

Not that Narcissa ever listened to her. Bella rolled her eyes when the other woman waved it aside. 

“I feel terrific,” she said stiffly. “A little cold will hardly stop me from visiting my sister.”

But it didn’t escape Bella that she wound her scarf tighter around her neck during those words.

When she meaningfully raised her eyebrows at it, it was Narcissa’s turn to roll her eyes. 

Bella decided to let her get away with it. Narcissa was beautiful the way a swan was beautiful, but on occasion she also was stubborn as a mule. 

Trembling herself when a gust of wind billowed up her robe to bite at her skin, she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to keep alive the dying warming charms she’d placed on her clothes. At least it hadn't started raining, though the gray skies promised the same snow slush that had been pouring down all week. 

Their banter died as they stood still on the stairway, waiting and listening. In the distance, the bee hum of one of those Muggle car speed streets hang in the air. But this short of Christmas, and on a Sunday evening no less, the suburbs of Manchester were covered in the same silence that could have been found in Hogsmeade or Tinworth, as if there were no difference. 

For a moment it seemed to the two of them that they could hear a child laughing inside the building – Bella immediately listened up, and beside her Narcissa straightened expectantly. But within a heartbeat, everything was quiet again. 

A wordless flick of Narcissa’s wand made the metal door knocker raise and fall back against the mahogany of the very modern, very Muggle front door. 

The silence following the heavy thump was so piercing this time that it made Bella’s ears ring. 

She pressed her lips together. In one determined motion, she pulled out her wand. 

“Oh bugger this, I have no patience for…”

“Bella.” Softly but firmly, Narcissa touched her shoulder with the tips of her fingers. “Don’t.”

Reluctantly Bellatrix sheathed the wand again. Narcissa sniffled, hand inching towards the sleeve that hid away her handkerchief. 

“She’ll let us in eventually,” she said after another moment of waiting, sounding clogged, looking the Muggle house up and down – no ancient, no magnificent mansion like it would befit one of the greatest and oldest Wizarding families in England, but just one of many row houses in Manchester, all looking the same but for the flower arrangements in the windows. “Maybe not this year, or next, but eventually. She’s still a part of the family, whether she wants to be a part of our lives or not. She doesn’t have a right to keep her daughter from us.” 

“How old is the child now?” Bella asked absently, although she knew the answer. 

“Five,” Narcissa replied and added, as if Bella didn’t know: “Her name is Nymphadora.”

Bella nodded slowly. Nymphadora. A good, strong Wizarding name. It broke with tradition a little bit, granted, but well – three generations of stars were quite enough to fill a sky. Dromeda had always had a gift of transforming the old-fashioned, dusty customs of the old families into something elegant, regal, even when she was still a little child herself. And Christmas was a time for family. 

Bella pressed her lips together. 

“Dromeda!” she shouted, glaring at the upper windows. The curtains remained shut tightly, as if the two of them were a thing to be feared, a thing you would want to hide from, as if they had ever done anything to their sister – and as if they ever would. “Open the bloody door!” 

She’d always been the most direct and impatient out of the three. 

Alas, the house remind silent. The lack of response in itself was an insult. 

Next to her, Narcissa was sneezing into her handkerchief, repeatedly, three, four times. 

“Come on.” Bella turned in exasperation, grabbing her sister’s shoulder and pushing her towards the street – mindful of her fragile state, but there was no mistaking that she meant it. “We aren’t wanted here.”

The house seemed to look after them accusingly, with darkened windows for eyes and an ugly Mudblood nose for a door, as if the two of them had been the ones who left the family behind and not the other way around. 

“You don’t understand,” Dromeda had said, the day before she'd left, and she’d been right. Neither of them had, or ever would.

Andromeda wasn’t Sirius. She hadn’t betrayed them, she hadn’t decided to _fight_ against them, go to war against her own blood alongside the ultras and the punks. Bella was reminded of that every day, because she couldn’t help but scan the _Daily Prophet_ for the name _Tonks_ every morning, and she never found it anywhere; it barely ever relieved her much, though. 

They’d all thought it was a stupid little adolescent crush, a little rebellion. Everybody went through a little rebellion at sixteen; Merlin knew Bella had. To this day, a part of her was convinced that Andromeda would eventually realize that that was all it had been and return to them, Nymphadora wrapped in a blanket and a warming charm in her arms, telling them she'd get that divorce. 

But today wasn’t that day. It would be yet another year with only half a Christmas celebration and a hole where there should have been three, another year they were deprived of Nymphadora's laugh. 


End file.
